The new Lagerstroemia cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the inventor, Michael Uchneat, in Bellefonte, Pa. The objective of the breeding program was to develop a compact Lagerstroemia exhibiting the characteristics of winter hardiness consistently superior to present compact and traditional market genotypes; heat tolerance equal to market genotypes; a fully mounded habit with superior branching and floral coverage; reblooming; multiple colors in a well-matched collection; dark green foliage; powdery mildew resistance; and excellent propagation characteristics from vegetative cutting. The open pollination resulting in this new variety was made during August of 2010.
The seed parent is the unpatented commercial variety referred to as Lagerstroemia ‘13301-1’. The pollen parent is unidentified as more than 15 proprietary pollen parents were used. The new variety was selected September of 2011 by the inventor in a group of seedlings resulting from the 2010 open pollination, in a seedling trial field in Bellefonte, Pa.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar was performed by softwood cuttings. This was first performed at Spring Meadow Nursery in Bellefonte, Pa. during February of 2011 and has shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type in multiple successive generations.